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Training Your Mind to Become More Confident During High-Pressure Situations

May 24th, 2017

Whether you are starting a new project, advocating for change, or chasing a deadline, you’ll feel the mental pressure. But, when you are a member of management, you don’t have the luxury of letting your level of stress show to those around you. Maintaining a sense of confidence is one of the strongest weapons against stress a person can possess, but that doesn’t make it easy.

Cultivating mental toughness takes focus and energy. You need to train your mind to support your goal and work to maintain control during any occasion, whether you are simply selecting temp agencies in Painesville Ohio or walking into a high-pressure meeting. To help you build your mental skills to create a more confident you, here are some techniques you can begin using today.

Identify Triggers

Everyone experiences stress under certain circumstances. One of the first steps to becoming more confident is to identify what about a situation shakes you. Some people find meetings challenging because they are uncomfortable speaking to a group. Others may dislike negotiations since they don’t like coming off confrontational. In fact, some people don’t like calling new potential service providers because they don’t like getting critical information over the phone.

If you want to train your mind to become more confident, you need to understand what actions or tasks produce the anxiety. This allows you to gain a true understanding of the root cause and gives you a point on which to focus.

Change Your Thoughts

Must of what causes mental stress is our interpretation of the events or the anticipation before the event occurs. Often, our internal dialogue to largely responsible for our negative reactions, making a high-pressure situation even harder to manage. You may find your confidence will increase once you learn to stop the self-talk that breeds doubt and replacing the thoughts with something more realistic.

Managing your internal dialogue requires vigilance. You have to identify the thoughts as they begin to form, interrupt them, and replace the idea with something based more in reality or even something affirming. Typically, we are our own worst critics, so replacing a negative thought with an assertion about skills you possess that will help you succeed can up your confidence level in the moment, allowing you to move forward.

So, while we foresee an upcoming presentation as an opportunity for others to judge us harshly, it is unlikely the audience will actually think as poorly of us as we assume. By learning to stop, take a breath, and exam how likely those situations are to actually run their course, we may find that our anxieties are our own creation and not accurate, allowing us to feel a higher level of confidence.

Practice Often

Once you identify a trigger and learn to identify negative internal dialogue, the best way to become more confident is through exposure. Find opportunities to take on tasks similar to those you find challenging. Look for chances to take on new projects or give presentations at work, or explore volunteer opportunities that can help you develop the skills.

The more you perform the task, the less intimidating it will feel. And, as you get better at controlling your internal dialogue, you may even feel that your original anxieties simply no longer exist.

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